


(I Know I Made You Leave) But I would Follow You Anywhere

by Aproclivity



Category: The Black Tapes Podcast
Genre: AU from 212, Alex Reagan is fed up with Strand's shit, Angry Alex, Dark Strand Light, F/M, More tags to come when I think of them, Possessive Behavior, Possessive Strand, Psychic Richard Strand, Strand's gotta Strand, Very Angry Sex, angry strand, nic silver actually has a bit of a spine, unsoundanniversary 2020
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-23
Updated: 2020-04-23
Packaged: 2021-02-22 20:55:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 10,128
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23800285
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aproclivity/pseuds/Aproclivity
Summary: After the events of 212, Alex is the one who needs a break from the story, much to Strand's anger. When he pushes her, Alex cuts of all interactions with his and takes a leave from him and the studio. Stand does whatever he needs to do to find her and bring her back.
Relationships: Alex Reagan/Richard Strand, Richard Strand/ Coralee Strand (past)
Comments: 5
Kudos: 43





	1. I know I made you leave

**Author's Note:**

  * For [the-wonderful-jinx](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=the-wonderful-jinx).



> Happy Unsound Anniversary, Jinx! I hope you like this! I started off thinking it was going to go full on Dark!Strand, but in the end we just got Manipulative, Possessive Strand. I hope you enjoy!

“I need a break.” Alex’s voice was soft on the phone, and she sounded more tired than perhaps she’d ever sounded. More tired than Strand had ever heard it, even when he’d obsessively listened to the show in the week since she’d released the final episode of season two. 

“Alex.” Strand’s voice was equally soft on the other end of the line, and he said her name in the cajoling manner that he had when he wanted her attention. And when he knew that he would get it from her. “Nothing is happening. Nothing is going to happen. If _escaped mental patient and mass murderer_ Simon Reese was right, then something would have happened already, yes?”

“Maybe. I don’t know anymore.” There was that soft despair in her tone again, the came that normally only happened in the middle of the night when she’d been awoken from the nightmare on her sleep note. He hated hearing that voice from the distance between them, and Strand moved to the window in his father’s house and looked out of it, still half-expecting her prias to pull up in front of the curb while they were talking. Alex was twenty minutes late. 

Alex was never late to see him, and he hated that she was. 

“Alex,” Strand said her name again, but more sternly this time. “You can’t just curl up into some hole because of this. It’s entirely useless and impractical, and you’re acting like this only affects you. You don’t get to take a break in the middle of this just because you’re tired!” He was letting his temper get to him more than he liked, and immediately, he tried a different tactic. “If you’re not sleeping, then it’s better to focus on something else.” And then he added a sigh for affect and lowered his tone. “I know how this feels, but you can’t just shut everything out, it doesn’t work.” Then the ever important: “I know, I’ve tried.”

But it wasn’t enough, and when his temper pressed at Alex’s, then her’s flared into being so much worse. At least it was life in her voice, he decided. “Are you seriously trying to manipulate me right now, _Dr. Strand._.” Yes, his title, used most often when she was angry with him or while she was trying in her most charming way not to flirt. Alas, this wasn’t what that was. No, this was all sharp and edges, and he could hear the sound of her tossing something angrily onto the counter. Yes, it was the counter which meant that she wasn’t at work either. 

“You know, for the last two years, I have taken a lot of shit from you, _Dr. Strand._ ” Alex’s voice rose a bit in pitch, and on his end, Strand scowled at the swear. When Alex swore in traffic or when she pulled her mouth away from the phone to swear silently, he found it charming. This was much different. 

“There’s no call for that language, Alex. I am merely attempting to remind you that what you're experiencing is nothing more than your overactive imagination rushing into overdrive because you're not sleeping. If you could just endeavor to look upon things rationally for once then perhaps you wouldn't be so prone to flights of fancy and you might remember that you're meant to be a grown woman and a journalist and not a scared little girl who needs a nightlight!”

From the moment of silence on the other end of the line he expected that he might have gone too far and he just said her name again with a sigh. “Alex….”

“No.” The word was forceful and he could almost hear her spine straightening with it. He let out a breath that he wasn't even aware that he was holding and perhaps his little pep talk had the required effect after all. Strand was almost congratulating himself for it before Alex spoke again. 

“No.” The word was repeated more sharply and in a tone that even at her most unhappy with him she hadn't used. “No. I'm done. I'm done with having you manipulate me and try and pull my strings to dance to your tune. Go _fuck yourself, Strand._.” And then before he could respond there was the sound of the calling being ended. 

Irate, immediately he pressed the button that would summon her back. Honestly this was how Alex was going to treat him after everything? No. No, his little podcast host had a few other things coming if she thought that! Immediately, he dialed her back and the message went directly to voicemail, so she had turned off her phone. More than that, she’d already changed her outgoing voice message, which meant that she’d planned to do this before she’d even told him. _Hi, you’ve reached Alex Reagan, host of The Black Tapes Podcast and producer at Pacific Northwest Stories. Unfortunately, I am currently taking a leave of absence. If this is important, please contact Nic Silver at his office at (206) 555-1212. If this is about a paranormal case, you can reach The Strand Institute at (312) 555-4326. Thanks._

He hung up, and then immediately dialed her back, only to get the same message once more. Gritting his teeth, he set the phone down. No, this wasn’t what was going to happen between them. Alex Reagan didn’t get to just waltz into his life with her eleven calls and turn everything upside down and then _leave_ like this. He wasn’t going to allow that to happen. Not with them, and not again. And certainly not when she wasn’t even going to have the decency to come and tell him this in person. 

Enraged once more, he picked up the phone and dialed her number a third time, resisting the urge to throw it across the room when he heard that lifeless message at the other end of the line. The lifelessness in her voice was a sharp chord, strumming at him when he left her his first message. “You are being unreasonable here, Alex. You’re forgetting that this is my life that has been turned upside down and not your own. I am the one who should need space but what I want to do is continue with our work. I thought you valued your _story_ ” and him of course, “more than this.”

Hanging up, he poured himself a whiskey and settled into his desk chair. When it came to Alex Reagan her temper was hot, but it would flare out soon. The message would help, he was certain once she had slept. 

It didn’t. 

It didn’t the first day, and it didn’t the second and on the third day Strand found himself once more at the studio of Pacific Northwest Stories with the identification badge that Alex had proudly given him when he’d come to Seattle to teach his course. When it doesn’t work to let him past security the first time, Strand had just assumed it was a malfunction. Technology is wonderful of course but sometimes it’s just a barrier. When the swipe doesn’t work a second time his confusion hardens, honing itself against an edge of speculation. After the third he just stared at the guard who looked at him with a harshness he didn’t expect. “There must be some sort of mistake. I’ve been here quite often. You can just let me up into the studio.” It was an order but a calm one. 

The security guard was not at all moved by it. Instead he just picked up a phone and dialed it before he turned and spoke low into the headset after a moment. Strand’s grip around his briefcase hardened, and his knuckles went white as he waited for a response. The line behind him grew, and people pushed past him as if he wasn’t even present. This couldn’t be happening and yet it was, and when the security guard’s attention finally returned to him, it was to hand him a badge with a large ‘V’ attached to it for visitors. “There must be some mistake.” The words were calm and mild, even if the hardness in his eyes was anything but. “I’m not a visitor.”

“Mr. Silver is expecting you, Dr. Strand.” Is all that the man offered. “He’ll meet you on the fifteenth floor.”

“I know where the PNWS offices are!” Strand just snapped the words as he takes the badge and scans it through the security station. For a moment it looked as if the guard would walk him to the elevator, but when he pressed the button for the floor, Strand was alone. 

When it opened, Nic was standing there waiting, and Strand just greeted him with a sharp, “Nicodemus.” Using Nic’s full name was a tactic that he’d been using for the better part of two years now when Alex’s producer was being particularly irksome, and Strand was slightly gratified by the way the Canadian’s eyes hardened before it. 

“Dr. Strand.” There was no warmth in Nic’s voice, and he expects that it’s the closest thing to censure that the man can offer while still holding onto his native politeness. “I’m surprised to see you here.”

“Perhaps this is better discussed in your office?” Strand’s voice was mild, but it allowed for no room for discussion as he opened the door to the studio offices. Interns paused in their work at the banks of their desks and their eyes were hard as well when they just stared at him. There’s none of the amused warmth or even like in them as he passes through, and none greeted him. Not even the particularly overzealous one that always seemed to crow over Strand’s attention. It was almost as if they saw an enemy in their midst. For another man, it might have been intimidating, but he was Dr. Richard Strand of the Strand Institute and the childish glare of college aged people didn’t phase him in the slightest. 

But he did pause in the corridor as he saw Alex’s office door closed, and there’s no welcoming light coming out from below the crack in the door. Alex Reagan had always had a rather strict open door policy for her office unless she was in a meeting with him or interviewing someone over Skype. Even then she’d kept the door cracked just a little because the small space could make her feel claustrophobic. It was something that had always annoyed him, but the annoyance had been pushed back when Alex had confessed the reasoning behind it to Strand. It struck him then that Alex really and truly wasn’t here. 

Entirely unhelpfully, and with a voice that was harder than Strand had ever heard Nic’s voice, even on the episodes that Alex had released when they were fighting, Nic just said. “She’s not here. She told you she wasn’t going to be here for a while.” There was a naked blame in Nic’s eyes and he just pressed on to his larger office and waited until Strand was inside before he closed the door with a snap that was almost a slam. “What are you doing here?”

“I came to see Alex.” The persona of Dr. Strand was entirely fixed onto his face, and Strand’s eyes were carefully blank even with the annoyance in his tone. It was obvious wasn’t it? “Where is she? Have you and your executive producers forced her into another vacation in a cabin in the woods?” With the last question, neither men could deny the accusation in it, and Nic flinched, much to Strand’s satisfaction. 

Nic recovered quicker than Strand would have expected. “Alex needed the time off, and the location was entirely her choice. She didn’t tell anyone where she was going until I received her first sleep note. I wasn’t her favorite person at the time.” What he doesn’t say, of course, is that he couldn’t have changed her mind even if he had known. But Nic continued. “I don’t know where she is now. I haven’t seen her since she left three days ago. What I do know is that she packed up most of the personal things in her office.”

That rocked Strand. A vacation of a few weeks was one thing, but to take her personal things home is another entirely. Strand knew without Nic saying anything that Alex hadn’t taken with her that was anything that was related to their show. It was just sitting there, waiting for someone to discover. “How long did she fill out paperwork for?” His question was insistent. “To be gone that long requires something official.”

Nic’s voice was professional and firm. “That is between Alex and the HR department.” Some sort of medical leave then. Something of that nature, Strand concluded. But Nic continued in a harsher tone. “I know that she told you that she wants no further contact with you, Dr. Strand. Alex made that clear when I spoke to her last. If you have something of a personal,” Nic stressed the last word, drawing a boundary around what he would consider Alex’s domain. “Nature within her office, I’ll accompany you to get it.” Watching him like a hawk obviously went without saying and both of the men knew it. 

Strand bristled, and his anger flowed down his spine in molten waves and it took him a moment to respond. “Thank you, Nic. I’d appreciate it.” There’s nothing else to say really, and Strand needed Nic to be as cooperative as possible while he was in Alex’s office and he knew it. The conversation was clearly over, and Dr. Strand (who he was in those moments entirely) rose to his feet and rebuttoned the buttons on his suit, obviously waiting for Nic to do the same. 

The walk to Alex’s office was a short one, but it felt much longer than normal as Nic’s eyes bored into Strand’s back the entire way. From somewhere, and Richard can’t be quite sure other than he might have been prepared for this moment, Nicodemus had produced a box for him to place his things in. A box, like he’d ever need something like that from Nic when he had his briefcase. When Nic opened the door and flicked on the light, it was without ceremony, and Strand just entered the room behind him. Without the energy of Alex there, the room felt bereft, empty even if the scent of her perfume wafted around him like a ghost that he proclaimed not to believe in. The office was more neat and tidy than Strand had ever seen it, and if there was one thing that could have convinced him about the nature of how serious Alex was about this, it was the emptiness of her walls and whiteboard. 

For all that Alex had mocked him about the state of Strand’s office, hers hadn’t been much better in the last few months. Maps and photos and files had been tacked everywhere with Alex’s hastily written and entirely disjointed filing system filling in the gaps there. It hadn’t made sense to Strand, not even with all of his time in investigation and academia, but it had made sense to _her_ and she was always able to find the things that she was looking for. Boxes that matched the one that Nic had procured for him were covered and closed and stacked against one wall, taking over the small loveseat that Alex had used when the exhaustion was too much. Even if it had only been a few days, the room had a dusty unused appearance and Strand just stood there for a long moment, breathing deeply. The silence stretched, and it’s one that Strand wanted to embrace, but as always Nic ruined it by speaking. 

“I think she left your things on the corner of her desk. It’s probably in a box too. Alex was being very thorough.” 

“Yes,” the word was soft, and Strand was barely aware of his own speech. “I can see that.” Crossing the room that his long steps had paced so often seemed to take longer than usual as he approached her desk and the box had a lid on it. On the top, scrawled onto the cardboard itself is his name. There was no paper attached to the outside of it, no note that he could see. It was just his name and from the depression in the material, Strand knew that she was angry when she wrote it. There was a reverence in him as he removed the unsealed lid, and there on the top of it was the copy of his father’s research journal that she’d made. There were only notes on the first page of it, the one that first talks about Tiamat being both a goddess of love and a goddess of destruction. The pages of it weren’t even creased beyond that. Strand could picture her here in her office, with Simon’s message playing in her head. He could see her sadness and weariness and Strand just closed the copy of the journal. 

Below the journal were other case files that are directly from his personal collection, complete with the notes that Alex had made on them. Making some pretense to see if there was anything else, Strand found nothing. He was about to close the box when he glanced over and saw a different open box labeled recycle. At the top of it, removed from the cheap frame that the interns had gifted her last Christmas, had been a picture that one of them had snapped when they were working. It was from season one and happier times, and their heads were close together. The moment came back to him so clearly, and he could picture it simply based on Alex’s bright grin and his own wry returning smile. The two of them looked happy in the snapshot, and Alex had left it on her desk among other photos of friends and family that she wasn’t able to see because her work schedule demanded so much of her. Those pictures, including their frames had been taken with her when she’d left. 

The picture of Strand and Alex had been left behind. Just like he had been.

Fury welled up within him once more, and his hands shook as he held onto the box’s lid. Looking over his shoulder at Nic who was still watching him warily, Strand just kept his voice mild as he could . “I believe that there are several packages of tea that Alex keeps hidden in the breakroom for me. They’re ones I’d brought with me from Chicago and the shop has since closed, making them irreplaceable. They’re my favorite. If you wouldn’t mind getting them for me so I don’t need to interact with any interns there…?”

Nic looked torn for a moment and he nodded. Clearly the interns were as unhappy about this as Strand imagined them to be and Nic just nodded after a moment. “I’ll be…” he started and then he stopped, before he tried again. “I’ll be right back.” Nic was trying to make the words seem like a threat, but what could he possibly threaten Strand with now that Alex is gone? As the sound of Nic’s steps retreated behind him, Strand just snapped the photo up and threw it into the box, taking care to slide it in between the cardboard side and the files with the photo facing the blank side. Despite knowing that Nic wouldn’t actually demand to see the inside of the box (even though he would want too) Strand didn’t want to take any chances with his discovery before he headed back toward the lobby once more. 

It was only a few moments before the younger man returned with two brown bags of tea that Strand didn't really care about and Strand just tipped the box toward him with the photo close to him for their return. Nic doesn’t even look into the box as he set the tea on top of it and Strand just closed it with a snap. 

“I guess this goodbye Dr. Strand.” Nic’s voice had a note of finality about it that Richard doesn’t like, but when the man slowly put his hand out, Strand did shake it. It’s not the last time the man will see him, Strand was entirely certain of that, but there are appearances to be kept. 

“Goodbye Nicodemus.” Strand’s voice was even and entirely business like. “I wish you the best.” It’s a lie but one that neither of them acknowledge as the elevator just closed Strand’s view of Nic staring after him. 

The next day, Strand took a different tactic. Stopping at the independent flower shop near Alex’s apartment building the bouquet himself. Eschewing red roses (save for one single one), Strand chose flowers that were white and yellow, and purple and all of them meant an apology. The flowers were a lavish mix of white and yellow roses, white tulips, white and lavender hyacinths, pink and white lilies of different varieties, and all of it is bound with ivy and tied with a white bow. Strand was quite proud of it and quite pleased with himself when he arrived in the lobby of Alex’s apartment building. 

Locating her apartment building had required no sort of subterfuge on Strand’s part. After meeting with Warren, Richard had dropped Alex off at her home. The two of them had been driving together when Coralee intercepted them after all, and then he’d been the one to drive them around the night following, and he’d driven them to the studio when they’d woken up on the couch afterward. If one could truly call what they were doing sleeping: it was more like a bare doze brought on by alcohol and the events of the days leading up to it. It wasn’t what one would ever call truly restful, and Strand wishes that Alex had taken the suggestion to go upstairs as seriously as he’d meant it rather than her thinking it was a joke. 

Well, the problems with having a deadpan wit, he assumed. 

But Alex’s apartment building is more secure than one would have expected considering how carelessly Alex Reagan took her safety. She’d confessed during the time that they were awaiting word about Sebastian that her joke to Collins hadn’t really been one. There had been a few instances well before Alex had met him that had needed to involve the police and the FBI because she’d received death threats in some cases. ‘Having extra security,’ Alex had said, in a joking way even if her eyes were not, ‘is worth the cost in Seattle.’ Strand had been relieved to hear it at the time, but he’d never expected the security to be used against _him._

“I don’t care who you are, buddy.” The doorman who looked more like a bouncer than what his uniform suggested told Strand bluntly. “Unless Ms. Reagan herself tells me to let you up, you don’t go up. And she’s not here to do that right now. No,” the man went on to add before Richard could ask. “I’m not going to tell you how long she’s gone or when she’s going to be back. Yeah, that’s a nice bouquet of flowers, but it doesn’t matter because she ain’t here.”

The abruptness in the man took Strand back, and a dark voice in the back of his mind wondered if he was the first who had tried this tatitic to obtain entrance to Alex’s apartment. There were dangerous people involved of course and they were suspect, like anyone within Warren’s employ. But there were other ones, more private and personal that his mind considered just as much as a threat: _Tannis Braun_ , that dark voice whispered. _Amalia. Michael Pullman._ But there’s nothing that he could do about it as the man just stared at him expectantly with his toe tap belaying his impatience. “Here.” The word was as stiff as the arm holding the flowers, and he just thrusted them toward the doorman. “I’m sure you’ll put them to better use than I will.” Then without another word, he turned and walked away from the front desk of Alex’s apartment building. There were other ways to find her. 

It was dark in his father’s house, and Richard could feel old ghosts pressing around him as he sat at the kitchen table. The kitchen in this house has always felt like it was the room that was most truly his in this damned mausoleum to his father’s insanity and Strand was aware it’s because his father probably rarely set foot there. If the light was on and he narrowed his eyes, he’s certain he would have been able to see the spectral form of Alex Reagan sitting across from him working on papers. But she’s not and her ghost isn’t what Richard wanted, which is why he stared down at the picture in front of him. 

There were flickering candles placed at each of the four corners of the photo and Richard had drawn everything that he could ever recall about Alex Reagan to him. Her smile was present of course, and a hundred different things that she’d said to him in different ways form a symphony in his mind. Strand had left the last things that Alex had spoken to him out of it though—that’s not what he needed focus on. He could smell her though: that particular mix of coffee and rain and her perfume that always accompanied her wherever she went. When fully formed Alex was present in his mind, Richard started to push, extending his thoughts beyond his father’s house. 

“Don’t do this, Richard.” Coralee’s voice cut through the darkness and when he lifted his eyes, she was there sitting in Alex’s chair. Well, not actually there for all of the ways that his wife appeared to be solid. The other part of his mind could see her where she is (and where she has been for _months_ ) in the rented house on the Sound. But he let her appear as she projected herself--as lovely and sharpened as a knife, dramatic and lean in black. Her expression held a dangerous note that Richard had never seen in the woman when she had been in his life, and he couldn't help but wonder how she had been so damned good at fooling him for so long. She didn’t fool him now. 

“Why?” Strand’s voice was sharp and hard, “because the more I use my abilities the more likely it is that the mantle of the dragon solidifies around my neck? The more likely I am to find the door?”

It wasn’t entirely clear, but he could have sworn that the projection of Coralee went more pale at his words. “Where did you hear that?” The words were a demand and not a request that she made, that much was clear in the flint in her eyes. 

“From the latest journal of my father’s that your lover sent me.” Strand just waved his hand quickly, dismissing what protest would come about how Warren hadn’t been her lover in years—he’d heard that before in person with her just a few days ago and has no reason to rekindle that argument. 

“That’s not why, my love.” Coralee protested, the pet name seeming more like a threat than anything else. “It’s because you shouldn’t do it while you’re so angry. That’s what makes what you’re doing dangerous.”

“You do not get to decide how I feel, Coralee. Not anymore. You never should have been able to in the first place!” Angry, impatient, his entire posture just went rigid with it along with it as well as his voice. “She left me. I’m going to find her. I’m not going to lose another person I love.”

“You never lost me, Richard. Not really.”

“Didn’t I? I have lost every woman I have ever loved. I’m not adding Alex to that number.”

“Margret died, Richard. She didn’t choose to leave you. Charlotte died too. I left because I had too. Charlie left because you scared her. Cheryl left because you shoved her away. Alex left because…”

“Because of you. Because of everything that you turned me into, Coralee. Charlie and Cheryl too. That is your fault.”

Coralee’s voice was acidic. “You were always so good at blaming everyone else for your mistakes, Richard. Me. Your father. Your sister. Your teenage daughter. Alex. When are you going to realize that the common denominator here in all of this is you?”

“Get the hell out, Coralee. You made your point of view perfectly clear when we last spoke.”

“You use all of us to play the victim. Poor little manipulated Richard. When you’re just as manipulative as the rest of us. In the case of your journalist even more. Do you think that she’s not going to find out that you were using her from the beginning—“

“Get _Out_!” There was a roar of power with his words, and Richard noted with satisfaction that his wife was no longer in the chair. More than that, the candles on the table had blown out as well. The distant hall light was out and the streetlights night longer gave their sickly orange glow to his curtains. Idly, Richard wondered if the outage would spread all the way to his wife’s rented house. But it didn’t matter. Strand could find her now, and then when he did, he had plane tickets to order.


	2. But I Would Follow You Anywhere

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Strand finds Alex where she'd gone on vacation (thankfully not a cabin) angry, possessive sex and truth bombs ensue.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So be warned there's possessive and angry sex happening in this chapter, but hopefully you'll enjoy it.

Let it never be said that Alex Reagan didn’t learn her lesson. This time there was no distant cabin where she was isolated for miles away from anyone else. This time her vacation was to a place that was warm and flooded with people. Last year, Alex had been scheduled to go on a cruise with her parents, but work had intervened. Pleading with her doctor to write a note saying that she was too ill to fly, Alex had hoped that the cruise line would have refunded her money. Instead they simply gave her a credit for her flight and a different cruise. 

Now, with six weeks off, Alex had taken them up on that credit, and had arrived in Miami a few days before it was set to embark. A cruise alone didn’t seem like all that much fun but given the truly exorbitant costs for cell reception or wifi, Alex hoped that it would nip any sort of inclination she had to call Nic or god forbid _Strand_ in the bud. She’d gotten his calls of course, but had deleted them unhead. Anger wasn’t something that Alex normally held onto, not like this, but she refuses to engage with him again until it’s on her own terms. 

Even if she doesn’t know what, if anything those terms happen to be right now. 

Surviving the first day of her two week cruise around the Caribbean had been harder than Alex ever would have imagined it to be, and suddenly she’s very glad for her father’s insistence that she’d take the all you can drink option in the cruise’s price. She didn’t want to think how much getting so drunk yesterday would have cost her. At least she had had the presence of mind to lock her phone and laptop up in the room safe before she’d started drinking. At least it had allowed her to get some fucking _sleep._ Alex had crashed hard after the embarking party, and then she’d spent most of the first day at sea asleep too. It was only when she’d woken up and read the personalized bulletin on the television that Alex had realized that this was the first of her two formal dinners during her trip. Formal dinners that had cost over a hundred dollars each. 

At the time it had been a good idea—Alex loved theme parties and a masquerade party was a _very good one_ —but now that she’s sitting there and staring at the dress bag in her closet complete with her fancy mask, it seemed like less and less of a good idea. It was easy for Alex to imagine her mother telling her to get dressed and go for a few reasons: she was supposed to be on this trip with Alex and now Alex felt like a complete fucking asshole for blowing it off, her mother would be shocked at Alex wasting that much money and finally as ever, she could hear her mother’s voice in her head telling her that it would probably be a good place for her to meet someone. 

Someone who isn’t Richard Strand, Alex just told herself firmly as she pushed the comforter off to get in the shower. 

For someone who was firmly telling herself to think of anyone but Richard Strand, Alex Reagan found herself thinking that she’d seen him at the party far too many times than was comfortable. ‘ _It’s just because he’s tall_.’ Alex had thought to herself angry when she thought she’d seen him in the foyer on the way to the ballroom. ‘ _It’s just because he has blue eyes._ ’ Was the thought when she’d thought she’d seen him at the bar with a glass of whiskey. ‘ _It’s just the mask._ ’ Alex added to the litany of excuses for her thinking. 

And then finally when she thought it was him coming toward her when she was leaving dinner to head back to her room was the worst one of all: ‘ _It’s because I miss him_.’ 

Needing to get the hell out of the fancy black dress that didn’t feel at all like herself with its short hem like and the deep cut from her neck to her cleavage, she needed to take off the heels that added several inches to her height and the stockings that were killing her, she needed to remove the pins and hairspray that secured the knot at the back of her neck. But most of all she needed to take off the feathered mask that made her feel entirely unlike herself. Alex just pushed her way through the crowd toward the other side of the ballroom, past the dancers who had assembled onto the floor to badly dance to what the orchestra was playing. All she wanted was to shower and put on her pajamas and glasses and be herself again. 

But then there was a hand wrapped around her wrist. The grip on it was polite and firm, the elegant fingers holding onto it just tightly enough. Focusing her face into a polite but do not fuck with me smile, Alex just whirled around to face the man and gasped. He was the one who had been watching her earlier, he had been the one who she had thought was Strand. And now up close with his blue eyes gleaming intently from the black and blue mask that Alex could see was etched with an octopus coming up from the depths of the sea she just gasped. 

“Dance with me.” The words were a soft but gentle command given a low tone that was just for her and Strand’s grip on her wrist didn’t release. 

“ _Richard_?” It was all Alex could do to gasp and she was too shocked to do anything but to let him pull her gingerly onto the dance floor. The grip was tight but it was careful as if he was worried he would hurt her. When they reached the edge of the wood parapet, his hand let go, sliding to her fingers and his other wrapped around her waist. Reflexively, Alex just put the hand on his shoulder as she stared into his face and both of them started to move to the music. But that didn’t stop the next question from coming. “What the hell are you doing here?”

The only part of Strand’s face that was free twisted into a wry smile as he looked down at her, and Alex can see the faint blue waves in his bow tie. “I had to see you, Alex I couldn’t just leave things the way that they were between us.” 

“How did you find me?” The question was a fine tone of anger and confusion as Alex just stared into his face again. She could see his eyes darken a bit as he replied. 

“The same way I found Bobby Maimes. The same way I tried to find Coralee.”

Alex just stared up at him, forgetting to move to the music until he tugged her along. “ _What_? Are you saying that you’re some kind of psychic _now_?” The words were a mix of anger, wonder and disdain. 

Strand’s smile tightened and so did his grip on her hand for a moment before he seemingly forced himself to release it. “I don’t believe that’s the proper term for it,” his voice was in lecture mode now, and Alex felt herself slipping into the old path of being fascinated by it. “However for now I suppose it will work. But yes, I do know now that I have some latent abilities that I have had all my life. Since I was a small boy. New evidence has recently come to light about it, and about steps taken by others in my life to stop it.”

“Evidence? I don’t understand.”

Strand just sighed, and a heavy weariness crossed his face. “After we heard the message from Simon, after I had dropped you off at your apartment, a package was delivered to me. It was from Warren and naturally I was suspicious about it. But even I couldn’t deny the authenticity of the journals within them. He didn’t just have one of my father’s research journals. He had all of them. I spent the night reading them. It’s why I was so… abrupt and angry when we last spoke.”

Alex’s face just twisted into confusion. “So he had other journals that he what...didn’t want the show to know about? Didn’t want _me_ to know about? How can you even be sure they’re real?”

“They’re real, Alex.” He said with a long sigh, and his shoulders just slumped a bit as they danced and Strand just stared down at her. “They’re real.” There was a long pause before he continued. “Yes, I believe he wanted to keep them from you, from the show, from the _public_.” Strand couldn’t hide this disdain in his voice when he said it and Alex’s frown just hardened for a moment. “There are things within them he doesn’t wish people to know. Not even me but the information within them—I believe that he found it too important for me _not_ to have. But they’re real, Alex. I have too many memories of my father writing in them, of seeing their backs in his office for them not to be what they purport to be.”

“What’s in them? What’s so important?” Alex didn’t want to ask him that, but she found herself compelled to do it anyway. It was almost like a spell to slip back into the old ways despite the circumstances around them. And more than that Alex wanted to _know_. She’s always wanted to know even when she knew it would be better for her—for _everyone_ —if she just left these things alone.

“My father,” and as always with Strand, Alex knew it to be shorthand for ‘ _that bastard_ ’ “knew of my gifts. They manifested when I was very young. Younger than even on the tape. His solution to them, to what they might _mean_ was to force them out of me. Anyway he could. He chose the direct force route to do it. You know I hated him. You know from my sister that he was abusive. But that was the reason why. He feared what I might do some day.”

Alex’s voice just dropped to a low whisper, because she suspected that she already knew the answer to the question she posed. “What did he think you might do?”

As a response, Strand just tugged her closer, looming over her to whisper in her ear. Alex knew that to anyone who might be watching them it would merely seem to be another intimate part of a slow dance. They wouldn’t be wrong, she thought. It _felt_ intimate. “He believed what Warren and Coralee do. He believed I would open the door to Tiamat. It’s why he tried to stop my abilities. It’s why Coralee blocked me from finding her. It’s why she tried to stop me from finding you, Alex.”

“ _What_?” The question seemed strangled in her throat, an animal that doesn’t want to be released and not for the first time, Alex regretted a question as soon as it had moved past her crimson painted lips. The forced sound of the first question made it easier for the second to pass into the space between them. “Why _me_?”

Strand just drew back a bit, and he looked at her with hunger in his eyes and Alex shivered a bit in ways that she couldn’t help. Strand had _looked_ at her in similar ways before during quiet moments when he had thought that she wouldn’t notice, but this is different. This is naked in a way that Richard Strand rarely was to her: someone who despite the fact that he was wearing a mask was somehow without one at the same time. It took Alex a moment before she realized she was holding her breath while waiting for the answer. 

“Because you’re _you_ , Alex Reagan. Because I love you.” He sounded entirely sincere, entirely serious and entirely Richard Strand. 

And Alex sounded very equally Alex Reagan when she just questioned: “what?”

They stood on the dance floor, staring at one another and neither of them realized that the music had stopped playing and the crowd around them had started to return to their seats. It was finally Richard who spoke. “We should go somewhere more private to discuss this. Not your cabin.” Something in Alex’s face but she doesn’t know what made him hastily add, “or mine. But somewhere not in the middle of the dance floor. Would you be agreeable to the deck? Neutral territory.”

“Neutral territory sounds good to me.” Her words were soft and she just nodded at him when he didn't let go of her hand. Either Richard knew the ship better than she did, or his sense of direction was better than hers is because he navigated the maze of corridors better than she could have hoped to do. The air was chilly, when they stepped out into it, but he was right—there was no one else around. It was almost like they could have been the last two people left in the world right then, and Alex just stared up at the rounded globe of the moon and its matching reflection in the inky water before she turned back to look at him. 

He was quiet, just watching her as if he was waiting for her to speak first and Alex was in no mood to humor him. Not yet. So, he was the first one to speak: just her name in a soft urgent tone. When she still didn’t respond he added once more: “I love you, Alex.”

Oh, how she hated herself then. Hated how her heart twisted upward at those repeated words. Hated how it filled her chest with something that was far too much akin to hope—to believing that he did actually mean them. Anger rose in her again, and Alex just latched onto it. It’s not the normal fuel for what drives her, but right now it felt miles better than setting herself on fire in order to keep herself lit. 

“I still don’t understand why you’re here _now_. I thought I made myself perfectly clear to you over the phone. I’m not going to just let you manipulate me anymore. I’m done with that. I’ve been doing it for too damned long as it is!”

“Alex, I am not doing this to manipulate you! I love you!” The words were half a shout in response to her anger and Alex was glad for it. 

“You couldn’t wait until I was back in Seattle to tell me? You couldn’t wait until I had finally gotten some fucking sleep and was away from you and your demons and your bullshit for a while? You just had to show up here, telling me that you’ve been lying about being psychic all along? That sure seems like manipulation to me. Again.” Alex’s voice was louder than she wanted it to be, and hurt warred with the anger inside of it. 

“You quit your job, Alex. I had know idea when or if you were coming back to Seattle or to me.” His voice was icy cold, filled with barely contained anger. 

So Alex’s voice went hotter with her own. “Of course I was coming back to Seattle! I’m not you, Richard. I don’t just pick up my toys and run away for months. I wouldn’t do that to Nic or my friends.”

He stepped closer to her on the deck. “Just to me.”

“I _told you I needed a break_. I needed a chance to get my fucking head back on straight. You’re the one who pushed and tried to pluck at all of my strings until I wouldn’t let you anymore. I was going on vacation. I _went_ on vacation. I didn’t hole up in my office and not shower and go off the fucking deep end like some conspiracy nut!”

“I was more than happy to ‘go off the fucking deep end like some conspiracy nut’,” strand’s words were rapid fire. “Need I remind you who showed up uninvited in my office to drag me back onto her show?”

“ _I was worried about you._ Of course I was worried about you. And it’s a damned good thing that I did. But we aren’t talking about that. We’re talking about you using the psychic abilities that you claimed not to have to stalk me and follow me to the middle of the damned ocean to confess that you love me. And what you thought that you’d come all this way and I would just be so overwhelmed with the gesture that I would just what? Swoon over and fall into your arms and confess my love for you?” Strand’s eyes just glistened darkly behind his mask and Alex couldn't help but to add: “oh my god you did! That’s what you thought would happen! Whatever feelings I have for you—“

Strand cut her off then, but not in the way that he normally would. Pulling her toward him, he kissed her. It was not a happy sort of kiss: it’s raw. It was full of anger, full of possession, full of passion and wanting to stop her talking. The kiss that Alex gave in return is the same: furious. Wild. Full of teeth and harshness and demanding. Strand’s hand tangled within her hair, pulling it and tugging it back with an arm that was tight against her waist. Alex’s hands scrambled below the tuxedo jacket, pulling it and the shirt beneath it up so that her nails dig into the skin of his back. 

With haggard and harsh breathing and the burning in Alex’s lungs forced them apart she didn’t speak. Instead she bit at his lip, dragging it with her teeth before nipping bites followed along his jaw line and down to his neck. They weren’t gentle—none of this was gentle— and Alex knew that they would leave marks and she didn’t care. She wanted to leave marks on his skin: physical proof that he wouldn’t be able to deny when he looked in the mirror. 

It’s clear that Strand had the same idea. He picked her up and placed her on the wide rail that served as protection from people falling over onto the lower decks. He pulled his neck back from her with a groan and Alex just wrapped her legs around him, not giving a damn that the heels of her shoes were probably painfully digging into the back of his knees. He kissed her again with that same internisty and Alex matched it with little moans slipped into his answering growls. With her arms wrapped around him, Alex whimpered with the constellation that he bit into her neck without rhyme or reason, a star map that only he would know. With him this close to her, there’s no way to deny the effect that this was having on him—Alex could feel him hard and straining at the pleats in the tuxedo pants. 

He parted from her slightly, and Strand’s familiar eyes searched her face as his fingers dragged along the line of her stockings to the lace at her thigh and beyond. When he found the sheer fabric of her underwear, he pulled his fingers up the front of it, pressing in until he can feel that she was damp for him. “Tell me you want this, Alex. Tell me that you want _me._ ” Strand’s voice was husky with want, with emotion, with the importance of the question that he’d asked her. 

It’s very easy for Alex to reply to him, because she’s a lot of things but a liar isn’t one of them. “Yes, Richard. I want you.” Her voice matched his own, full of whispered intensity that would have been lost in the engine of the ship and the sea of the two of them weren’t so close and wrapped up in one another. 

Richard just groaned softly and he kissed her again, some of the angry notes of his kiss slipping more into possession rather than straight out anger. Alex doesn’t lose her own, but she keens when Richard pushes aside her panties and moves his fingers over her core. She and Amalia had always joked that Strand looked like he should play the piano or the violin with fingers like the ones that he had, but she knew when his fingers pressed over her clit that this was their true purpose. Whimpering into the kiss, Alex just bites his lower lip again. 

When his first finger entered her, she arched her neck back, her hands digging into his shoulders as she did so. When he added the second, he pressed a bite further down against her shoulder. “This doesn’t mean I forgive you,” Alex couldn’t help but to hiss at him, and she bit him again, this time harder, almost hard enough to draw blood to the wound as she scratched at him. 

Sliding his third finger into her and curling them upward, Strand’s thumbnail lightly dragged over her clit, and Alex shuddered. “I don’t forgive you either, Alex. Never.” He bit down and fucked her with his hand at the same time, using the act as a punctuation for each word that he said. “Even. Think. Of. Leaving. Me. Again. You’re mine, Alex Reagan.”

Alex shuddered around him, gasping and whimpering and so very close. But Richard stopped. “Say it Alex. _Say it_.” There was nothing gentle about his voice and the Alex Reagan that always chased shadows and wanted darkness and looked under her bed for monsters couldn’t help but to respond to it. 

“I won’t leave again.” Even though Alex knew that she kept the promises that she made for the most part, she couldn’t help but to make this one. The second part was easier for her to speak, because Alex knew it was true and had been for longer than she’d wanted to admit. “I’m yours.”

And then very deliberately Alex added, “and you’re _mine_.”

When Richard made his huffy laugh—her huffy laugh—Alex didn’t know if it was relief or something else that had drawn it to his lips but he kissed her again, withdrawing his hand. Watching her as he pulled his hand to his lips, Richard made eye contact with her through the masks that both of them were wearing. Alex wondered, as the moment drew out, as her breath was sharp between them, as she could feel her core twist and flutter, wanting more, if this was the first time she was truly seeing him without his normal mask. 

With a single word: “ _delicious_.” Richard just kissed her again, and Alex could taste herself in his tongue and lips. It was only a moment and she could hear and feel rather than see him undo the button on his pants. The sound of his zipper followed next and Alex knew that it was habit and anticipation that caused him to stroke his hard cock a few times rather than an actual need. He teased her with it, _the bastard_ , tracing the head through her folds, following the path that Richard had traced before with his fingers. “Say it again, Alex,” Richard ordered, his voice husky with anticipation. “Say it again.”

Alex wasn’t an idiot, and she knew what he meant even if she hated the begging note in her voice. “I’m yours, Richard. You are mine and I won’t leave again.”

With a pleased sigh he entered her and Alex shuddered crying out against his skin. When he fucked her, it wasn’t like she had ever thought that it would be with Richard. It was hard and unrestrained and almost animalistic and Alex felt herself close to climax much quicker than she could ever remember being with a partner when it wasn’t augmented with some sort of toy. Despite trying to smother the sounds that she had been making against his neck, Richard tugged on her hair to make her look at him and he just stared down at her face as he paused. 

Without warning, Richard ripped off her mask, pulling it loose and dropping it onto the deck below them. He growled lowly, his voice just for her. “No. I want to see your face when you come for me for the first time, Alex.”

Some distant part of her knew what he meant, he wanted _evidence_ because Richard always wanted evidence. As his blue eyes met her own brown ones, Alex just reached up and untied the knot holding his mask in place. His hair was just as damp with sweat as hers was, matting a bit where her fingers had been running through it but her removing his mask and letting it fall is far more gentle than his own had been. 

With his stare, Alex felt naked, even though all of her clothing was still in place even if it was in disarray. He kissed her again, but this time there was some tenderness in it that Alex returned and he started to move once more, but more slowly and with strokes that had purpose and were deliberate. Alex came quickly after that, screaming out his name as she did it. 

Richard came very shortly afterward, staying inside of her when he did. He kissed her again as he softened there as well, and when he pulled out of her, his hand moved her panties back into place. The thin layer of fabric did nothing to prevent the slickness from spreading over her thighs and they just stared at one another as they caught their breath. 

Alex knew that she probably looked like hell with her hair a mess, her makeup smeared across her face and her neck and the exposed area of her shoulders spackled with bite marks. Even below her dress, she could feel where the pale skin of her hips were already starting to show fingerling bruises from how hard he had held onto her. Swaddled in his jacket, Alex and Richard went to his cabin, by mutual agreement, because it was closer. Given the lateness of the hour, they didn’t come into contact with anyone else as they moved through the corridors and up the elevator, Richard’s arm looped around her and held her at his side. 

When Alex stepped into the room after he unlocked it she just laughed in disbelief. “So you’ve been lying about having a million dollar prize but you managed to book a state room with a _balcony_ on a moment's notice?” Alex found herself wandering through the room to press her hand against the glass of the floor to ceiling windows showing the sea and the moon outside. 

“I _have_ a million dollars,” he protested quickly, while he undid his bow tie and dropped it onto the dresser. “It’s just not liquid. Besides…”

Alex just turned and looked at him flatly, giving him a stare. “If you tell me that no one is going to turn in proof less than three hours after telling me that you’re psychic and that you used your ability to find me, I’m going to scream, Richard. You owe someone a million dollars. Maybe even _me_.” 

He studied her for a moment, pausing in removing his cufflinks and came to her, tenderly pushing some of the hair from her face before he kissed her lightly. “Perhaps.”

“So what now?” Her question is soft as Alex reached up automatically and undid the first button of his collar. 

“A shower I think, some sleep. Breakfast in bed and then moving things from your cabin up to here.” Richard’s voice was soft as he reached behind her and slowly undid the zipper on her dress, letting the bodice fall between them. His fingers traced the line of marks that he had made on her down to the black lace of her bra. “My god, you’re beautiful, Alex Reagan. You always have been. But in this light, you are truly breathtaking.”

Alex kissed him this time, letting the dress fall below her and onto the floor. Stepping out of the silken black puddle of it, she traced her fingers along his cheekbone slowly before she spoke against his mouth. “That’s not what I meant and you know it.”

He sighed, stepping back from her and finished unbuttoning his shirt. “We finish out our vacation. We go back to Seattle and work out what the hell is going on with Warren. We stop him from doing whatever he wants to do to the world. When it’s done you can tell your listeners whatever you want about my ability but not before then. I believe that my skepticism is the one thing that is preventing Thomas Warren from coming at me, at _us_ ,” Richard just emphasized quickly and in a softer and more urgent tone before he kissed her again. “In a more direct way. The stakes are higher now, my lovely Alex, then they’ve ever been before.”

Alex just let off a soft sigh. “I know. I know that they are. They’ve always been progressively getting higher since I started this. I’m not an idiot. Mostly.”

“Reckless,” he said with another kiss, “infuriating,” another kiss, and another following each word. “Annoyingly persistent. Willfully blind. Enchanting. But never an idiot, Alex.”

“We aren’t discussing this though, Richard. Full disclosure. I want to know every single thing you’ve lied to me about. I want to know what was in the journals of your father’s that Warren had and sent you. I want to know what happened with Coralee when she told you not to find me. I want the real story about Bobby Maimes. And I want it all to be the truth with nothing you hold back because you think I don’t need to know it. If I’m yours and you’re mine and you lie, then that’s all of it. _All of it_. You don’t get to pick and choose. All of it or none of it. That’s it. That’s the deal.”

“Christ you’re relentless. Is there anything in your life that you’ve ever actually been able to let go of, Alex? But yes. I agree. Tomorrow. The whole truth. All of it.”

“Maybe just the idea of not falling in love with you I suppose,” Alex answered, her arms around his neck. 

“Maybe that.” Richard agreed, “but it’s a folly that we’ve shared, Alex. Let’s shower.”

Alex let Richard lead her to the shower, and he fell asleep with his arms wrapped around her, his face against her neck. She could smell him all around her, swimming in his old Yale t-shirt with him in proper pajamas. She watched the moon set in the sky and finally fell asleep hours after he did, with the pinkish gold rays of the dawn coming into the window. 

And when Alex Reagan dreamed, she dreamed of the two of them standing in front of a door.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments and kudos give me life.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments and kudos are love.


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